trousers as I can in mine,
and neither can the others. I'll like to see them try to do this,"--
and he turned three summersaults in the middle of the room and
stood on his head on the biggest hole in the carpet--and wiggled
his legs and wiggled his toes at them until they shouted so with
laughing that Ridiklis ran in with a saucepan in her hand and
perspiration on her forehead, because she was cooking turnips,
which was all they had for dinner.

"You mustn't laugh so loud," she cried out. "If we make so much
noise the Tidy Castle people will begin to complain of this being a
low neighborhood and they might insist on moving away."

"Oh! scrump!" said Peter Piper, who sometimes invented doll slang--
though there wasn't really a bit of harm in him. "I wouldn't have
them move away for anything. They are meat and drink to me."

"They are going to have a dinner of ten courses," sighed Ridiklis,
"I can see them cooking it from my scullery window. And I have
nothing but turnips to give you."

"Who cares!" said Peter Piper, "Let's have ten courses of turnips
and pretend each course is exactly like the one they are having at
the Castle."

"I like turnips almost better than anything--almost--perhaps not
quite," said Gustibus. "I can eat ten courses of turnips like a
shot."

"Let's go and find out what their courses are," said Meg and Peg
and Kilmanskeg, "and then we will write a menu on a piece of pink
tissue paper."

[Transcriber's Note: See picture peter_piper.jpg]

And if you'll believe it, that was what they did. They divided
their turnips into ten courses and they called the first one--"Hors
d'oeuvres," and the last one "Ices," with a French name, and Peter
Piper kept jumping up from the table and pretending he was a
footman and flourishing about in his flapping rags of trousers and
announcing the names of the dishes in such a grand way that they
laughed till they nearly died, and said they never had had such a
splendid dinner in their lives, and that they would rather live
behind the door and watch the Tidy Castle people than be the Tidy
Castle people themselves.

And then of course they all joined hands and danced round and round
and kicked up their heels for joy, because they always did that
whenever there was the least excuse for it--and quite often when
there wasn't any at all, just because it was such good exercise and
worked off their high spirits so that they could settle down for a
while.

This was t